I have currently come across with the Read Write Web article titled “Now is the Time to Quit Facebook” and noticed that I was late to discover “I am not on Facebook group” as well as  http://www.im-not-on-facebook.com/ and @notonfacebook‘s Twitter. While reading the comments on the article, I liked one user comment on how she took a Facebook sabbatical and wished she could quit completely. Other people’s stories continue with different reasons to quit (i.e. the definition of friendship, loneliness, privacy, jealousy etc.)

About 6 months ago without knowing that this group existed I took my own Facbook sabbatical. I had no problems of Facebook addiction or spending many hours on Facebook, or lurking other people’s profiles. My Facebook usage was moderate, as I was also an instructor teaching Social Media and constantly integrating Facebook into my teaching. I created FB groups for my classes, fan pages for the companies, joined professional development groups, and formed professional connections with my colleagues as well as family, friends, acquaintances etc- anybody I knew could go under this overarching group “friends”. I personally and professionally see a lot of value in using Facebook for supporting and even building these connections and a venue which we should all pursue as a cultural playground.  My reason for taking the Facebook sabbatical was simply to experiment with “not using Facebook” except the e-mail option. As a teacher and researcher of educational technologies, I simply wanted to explore the value of this technology in my life. Here is my initial impressions on what happens when you take a Facebook sabbatical (notice no quitting, but taking a sabbatical in my own terms):

• You don’t get notifications on your friends’ birthdays, and therefore don’t feel guilty about sending late birthday messages. You simply stop  congratulating “stuff” on Facebook. Unless anybody informs you about their wedding, new born baby, new house, new job, new break up, new publication, or a new relationship through e-mail or phone (which doesn’t happen very often), you just don’t know what happens in people’s lives.
• You stop posting your pictures on Facebook, and even though have couple urges to post the pictures of awesome places you visit, your sweet cat or newborn baby, quiting all those gives you a liberation. You stop taking pictures just to put on Facebook (or share), but take them because you want a nice memory of a moment.
• You start reading about privacy, develop some consciousness around the concept. You start forming your own privacy rules instead of letting a software’s default options decide for you. After all, you know that there is a big data and an elaborate analysis behind the interface decisions on these programs, and everything is placed there for a reason. You start taking control of your own usage, just like you do with other programs.
• You start exploring other networks, partly because of  making professional connections and sharing (My twitter usage increased in the last 6 months.).
• You experiment with the “critical use”, being critical in the actions,  reasons, goals, relationships, connections, and access within the online spaces.

I am not alone! A simple google search resulted in quite a big number of people quitting Facebook and experimenting with it. Here is the one on quitting and returning to Facebook.

As an educator and researcher of learning technologies and cultures, I see a great value in these kind of experiments to uncover the conventions and habits in our lives that we tend to accept as they are and not question their meanings and values. As a qualitative researcher, one can also practice making invisible visible, familiar strange, and strange familiar. My Facebook sabatical experiment will continue, after all “All the cool kids are quiting Facebook now” (Also see The Facebook Resisters on New York Times and facebooksabbatical.com)

* Picture from facebooksabbatical.com